Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

You will not stop me, Aunt Germaine. For I am about to do what you lacked the courage to. And I will not forget your betrayal neither.

She might try to use her authority—those terrible eyes of hers—to dissuade him, but Jason would not heed them.

I mean to kill him, he would say. I mean to kill him before I burn his evil quarantine to the ground. Yes. Just like you did to my mama’s homestead. I am going to burn this place and everything in it and they can damn well hang me for it if they can catch me.

Aunt Germaine would shrivel before the onslaught of his venomous rhetoric, and thus unencumbered, Jason would stride down the hall, to the office where Dr. Bergstrom lived. He would kick in the door rather than open it, and when Dr. Bergstrom opened his mouth to shout, Jason would raise the revolver, sight down its barrel, and before he put the bullet between the doctor’s no-good eyes, he would say…

He would say…

The corridor opened up into a larger room that Jason remembered. But this time, without the candlelight to blind him, he was able to apprehend a rectangle of light, or lighter darkness at any rate. A window? No—as Jason stumbled toward it, he saw that it was more than a window. Cool night air—air unsullied by that strange sweet smell—wafted in through an open door.

“Ha!” Jason left his scheming for a moment and hurried toward it.

He stumbled a moment over some carpeting, but regained his footing and continued, wondering: Who opened that door? Maybe that fellow in white, on his way out?

Maybe—maybe those things?

Even as he wondered that, the lighter dark flickered for a moment, as a shadow drew across it. Jason stopped dead. He pulled the sheet close around him, pressing it against the cut in his hand.

The shadow came back. This one, at least, was not in miniature. It was nearly as tall as the door—definitely a fellow—but hunched peculiarly.

“Mister—Mister Juke?” said the shadow.

Jason said: “Who?”

The shadow stepped to the door frame, and reached out a hand. There was the sound of a match being drawn, and then, a tiny glow of light. Jason squinted and looked at the dark face behind the flame.

“The Negro,” he gasped.

“Who are you?” said the Negro, holding the match forward and looking Jason up and down. “And what happened here?”

And then the match went out and the darkness closed back in on them. That did it.

“You better step out of the way, sir,” said Jason, “because this place is filled with Devils from Hell and I don’t want to stay here a minute longer.”

10 - The Autopsy

Andrew Waggoner stepped out of the way, and let the boy out. He looked like a performer in a Greek play—robed in a blood-spotted sheet, face twisted in agony. Andrew was in his own kind of pain. Two nights after his incident, and he had still managed to keep off the morphine, and here he was, gallivanting in the middle of the night outside the quarantine. But one look at this boy, the blood, the wild expression in his eye, ignited his physician’s instincts and let him set his own troubles aside.

“Come on,” he said, leading the boy over to a little stone bench. “Sit.”

“I want to get as far from here as I can.”

“That’s fine. But not before I get a look at you. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

The boy squinted at him. “You’re the Negro doctor,” he said. “That right?”

Andrew let himself crack a smile. “Dr. Andrew Waggoner,” he said. “I prefer that to Negro Doctor, if you don’t mind. Particularly coming from a boy wearing a sheet.”

The boy nodded. Andrew was glad to see he seemed to be calming down.

“I’m Jason Thistledown,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, Dr. Waggoner. Sam Green says you’re going to make trouble here. That’s good, far as I’m concerned.” He put his hand forward. It was covered in blood that welled from a long slice up the palm.

Andrew lit a match on the stone bench and took a closer look at it. The wound was deep, like he’d cut himself with a straight razor. “How’d you get this?”

“Scalpel,” said Jason.

Andrew looked him in the eye. “What are you fooling with a scalpel for?”

“My aunt gave it to me.”

“Well, I’ll have to give your aunt a talking-to. This is going to need stitches.”

“Fine by me on both counts, Dr. Waggoner. Now can we get away from here?”

“Of course we can,” said Andrew. “I think we’re going to have to help each other getting back, though. Neither of us is in very good shape tonight.”

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